Sprout Social
The value is the network, the data or the infrastructure. Keep paying.
Social media management for larger teams: publishing, a unified inbox for every mention and message, listening across platforms, and reporting.
Build publishing and your own mentions inbox. Listening is not available to you. WHAT YOU CANNOT GET - Full firehose access. Platforms sell it, and the price is far above this subscription STACK - Postgres, a worker, one page PUBLISHING - Scheduled posts with per-platform variants, a worker with row locking, appended status history MENTIONS INBOX - Poll each platform's mentions and messages endpoints with a stored cursor - Store them in one table with the platform, the author and a reply status - Respect the rate limits; back off on 429 and never lose the cursor REPORTING - Posts, reach and engagement per week, computed from stored rows - Say plainly on the report which numbers come from the platform and which you counted Include the schema, the mention poller and the cursor handling.
What you lose
- Social listening across public conversation, which needs firehose access most companies cannot buy
- A unified inbox covering every message type on every platform
- Reporting and approval workflows an agency can hand to a client
If you would rather not build
- Buffer, for the publishing half
- A spreadsheet and the native apps, which is how most small teams work
The escape hatch
open source · no votes, no paid placement
Mixpost
$0Self-hosted publishing with a calendar and multiple accounts.
inovector/mixpostfree · open source
Why this verdict
our own opinion · changed only by a person
24/100
Verdict no at 24. Publishing and mentions are reachable; listening across public conversation needs data access you cannot buy at this price.
History
tracked since 10 Aug 2026 · nothing is ever overwritten
Questions about Sprout Social
answered from the record above
Is Sprout Social free?
No — the plan we track is $249 a month. Standard from around $249 per seat per month billed monthly, cheaper annually.
Can you replace Sprout Social by building your own?
KEEP IT. The value is the network, the data or the infrastructure. Keep paying. Replacement score 24 out of 100, build time longer than it saves. Read what you lose before you decide.
How much does Sprout Social cost?
$249 a month on Standard — $2,988 a year. Recorded 10 Aug 2026.
What do you lose by replacing Sprout Social?
Social listening across public conversation, which needs firehose access most companies cannot buy; A unified inbox covering every message type on every platform; Reporting and approval workflows an agency can hand to a client. If any of those carry weight for you, keep paying.
Is there an open-source alternative to Sprout Social?
Yes: Postiz, Mixpost. The prompt on this page is for when you want it your way instead.
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